


Shades of Grey

by flaming_muse



Series: Reality Bends [6]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: April Showers Challenge, Fisting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:11:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is expressed in many ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades of Grey

**Author's Note:**

> set in the Reality Bends 'verse, which goes AU from AtS 5x07, "Lineage" - it can be read as a standalone post-W&H Spike/Wes without losing too much context
> 
> WARNING FOR 'CONSENSUAL NON-CON' AND FISTING
> 
> originally posted to my LJ on June 23, 2010

Spike never had any problems sleeping well alone in the flat, at least not since he’d learned to shut Minerva out of the room before he stretched out naked on top of the covers after a shower. He knew even with his eyes still shut he could take a random burglar trying a little B-and-E, and there was a wicked knife in the bedside stand to deal with anything else.

So even though Wesley had been away in California for a week and wasn’t due home for at least two more days, Spike wasn’t particularly concerned when the opening of the bedroom door woke him from his dream; since he hadn’t heard the front door being forced open he knew it had to be –

Wesley stood just inside the bedroom, and the hard set of his face was enough to keep the welcoming smile from forming on Spike’s own. Wesley looked tired, his fatigue etched into the tight lines around his mouth. His expression was intense, his eyes dark and cold, almost flat. The spark of warmth and love that usually resided deep in them was not visible at all, and the tension in his body made the predator’s instincts in Spike rise to the surface. Wesley was on a dangerous edge, like a tiger ready to spring if anything made the wrong move.

“Am I interrupting something?” Wesley asked with a lifted eyebrow at Spike’s nudity.

“Just a nap,” Spike replied, carefully neutral. He kept his body relaxed, though his mind was racing. What could have happened in Los Angeles with Angel that would have made Wesley so closed-off? They’d talked a few days before, and Spike hadn’t heard anything odd in his voice besides an encouraging undertone of longing to be back together. “Nice to have you home, pet. Early and all, too.”

“Yes. Home.” The inflection of the word made it sound like some mythical land that didn’t exist. Wesley looked at him for a long moment, then slipped out of his leather jacket. He laid it neatly across the back of the corner chair and watched Spike some more, studying him like a specimen instead of enjoying the sight of his body as he usually did.

“Plenty of room for you,” Spike offered.

“I don’t think so.”

Spike gestured to the rest of the bed. Sure, he was sprawled in the middle of it, but there was lots of space left… especially if Wesley got as close as Spike would have liked. They wouldn’t need much space at all. Bloody hell, he’d missed Wesley, missed his touch and his laugh and his encyclopedic knowledge of demons and take-away numbers. He’d missed having him at his back and in his bed, and instead Wesley had been with bloody fucking Angel all week, where Spike had not been invited and where something had happened to take the light right out of his eyes.

Impatient to get his own Wesley back, Spike started to sit up, but Wesley just held out a hand.

“Stay there.” It wasn’t a request, but it also wasn’t a semi-playful command of the sort that got them both hard and led to some serious shagging. It was simply what Wesley wanted, stated bluntly. It felt wrong.

“Wes – “

“Stay there, Spike.” Wesley went to his dresser and pulled something from the top drawer before walking toward him. He held in his hands a pair of handcuffs, the special ones they’d had made after Spike kept pulling apart the normal sort when he got too excited. “Hands.” Wesley pointed to the headboard, also made of an extra-strong alloy reinforced with magic. He’d grown tired, he’d said, of having to toss out iron bedsteads bent like paperclips.

This wasn’t good, Spike thought. Not that he minded being chained to the bed or ordered about, but something was wrong with Wesley. Something had hurt him, tortured him deep inside. This wasn’t some fantasy Wesley had been waiting for all week; it was something harsher and harder. They weren’t big into wine and roses before bed, at least not often, but there was always the feeling of love beneath what they did. It was distinctly missing from Wesley’s eyes.

Unsure of what else to do to get to the bottom of the situation, Spike complied, raising his hands to the metal headboard and allowing Wesley to fasten the cuffs around his wrists. Wesley didn’t touch him directly, and Spike felt a flicker of apprehension when he stepped away once the job was done.

“You’ve just allowed yourself to be chained to a bed by someone who has a dozen weapons on his person,” Wesley commented, unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt and rolling them up a few times. He took off his wrist sheaths and placed them on the dresser beside him.

“Not the first time,” Spike said, trying very hard to sound nonchalant when in fact he was studying Wesley’s every move.

“Some might call that foolish.” A knife came out of its place on his belt.

“Some might call it kinky.” He felt vindicated by the tiny quirk of Wesley’s mouth.

It disappeared, though, as Wesley continued to remove his hidden weapons. He stopped and stared at the stake he pulled from his sleeve.

“I suppose,” Wesley said, “you could get out of that if you tried. You’re very strong.”

“I am. But there’s no reason for me to try.”

“I have a stake in my hand.”

“And a gun in your holster,” Spike said with a frown, “but what’s that to me, pet?”

Wesley turned to the dresser, looking even more bleak. “You don’t think I could hurt you.” He sounded disappointed in Spike’s answer, like it had been the wrong one for a test Spike didn’t even understand.

Spike realized he was pulling a bit against the cuffs, probably not enough for Wesley to notice but enough to remind himself that he needed to keep from getting wound up when Wesley was so tense. He forced his body to relax. He’d have to sort this situation out with words. “I know you could.”

“And yet you’re not worried about stopping me?”

“No.”

“Because you’re so much stronger than I am.”

“No, I wouldn’t _stop_ you,” Spike said.

Wesley’s head snapped toward him, his unspoken question written on his face.

“If you were coming to stake me, pet, you’d have a good reason,” Spike told him. He knew it all the way deep into his soul, just as he knew that if it ever came to that the last thing he’d see was the abject desolation in Wesley’s eyes as he pushed the stake home. “I trust you.”

Wincing, Wesley turned again, placing the stake on top of the dresser. He didn’t speak or look at Spike for a long moment, and then he said, “Shut your eyes.”

“Pet – “

“I thought you trusted me.” Wesley’s voice was cold and distant.

Spike did as he was told, frustrated that he’d have to figure Wesley out blind, as it were, without the visual clues that could help him. But he didn’t know what to do besides play along. If he’d been awake, out in the living room when Wesley had returned maybe he could have headed this whole thing off, but it was too late to start again. Far too late.

There was more rustling of leather and clothing and a few more clunks of weapons and other objects joining the collection on the dresser. The only other sound in the room was Wesley’s breathing, which was shallow and fast, like his chest hurt. Spike inhaled deeply, but he didn’t smell blood, and Wesley hadn’t been moving like he’d been injured, at least not physically. Whatever was wrong, whatever had happened, Spike would take it out of Angel’s flesh the next time they met.

Wesley stopped moving, and the minutes dragged on. Spike wasn’t good at remaining silent, not when it wasn’t a game but was his lover’s heart on the line, and he was just about to say something, anything, when he heard slow footsteps coming toward him. He turned his face in Wesley’s direction, though he kept his eyes closed.

“You trust me,” Wesley said, soft, harsh, and bitter. It was neither a question nor a statement of fact, just a repetition of what Spike had said earlier.

“Yes, love.”

Wesley let out a long breath then, and there was a solid thunk of metal on the table beside Spike’s head. He knew it was Wesley’s gun, just as he knew, with the same instincts that made him turn to face an attacker from behind just at the right moment, that the gun had not been pointed at him while in Wesley’s hands. Still, it was wrong, Wesley holding a gun in their bedroom instead of holding him.

One of those errant fingers touched his jaw, making him start. “Open your mouth,” Wesley said, and Spike did.

Two fingers slid in along his tongue, and he closed his lips around them, sucking on them gratefully. If Wesley was touching him, if Wesley was turning from despair to desire, then maybe there could be an ending they’d both enjoy. This was something Spike could do.

He licked and sucked Wesley’s long fingers, his body tingling at the much missed taste of his skin, and found himself starting to get hard from the process. There was no disguising it, naked as he was, and that fact got him even harder.

“Enough,” Wesley said finally. He was breathing raggedly, though he still sounded distant. He stepped back, dragging his dry hand down Spike’s chest and stomach. “Lift up.” Spike raised his hips as Wesley shoved pillows underneath. He pushed Spike’s legs up and apart.

Spike pulled a little against his restraints. This, he understood. Wesley would fuck him, and then everything would be all right. It’d be all right for him, too, because he’d sure as hell been lonely all week. Then they could have a nice long nap and maybe another leisurely shag afterwards. It would be –

Without preamble or further preparation, Wesley slipped his two spit-slicked fingers behind Spike’s balls and pushed them into his body. Spike arched up; he couldn’t help it. It hurt. He didn’t mind; pain could be good, but it did hurt. It wasn’t a gentle glide; it was a series of focused, intense movements to get Wesley’s fingers deeper and deeper into him without the benefit of a decent lubricant.

“You’re very tight,” Wesley commented, and though he still sounded breathless his inflection was as cool as if he were discussing the weather.

Spike clenched helplessly around Wesley’s fingers, then relaxed. “You’ve been gone.”

“I would’ve thought you’d be fucking yourself silly night and day with that enormous dildo you love so much.” He scissored his fingers, making Spike gasp.

“Only when you use it,” Spike replied. He’d bought it as a joke, really, to try to make Wesley blush, but being fucked and sucked at the same time was a mind-blowing orgasm all the same.

“How sentimental.”

“Just the truth, pet.”

The first burning stretch was passing, and Spike rolled his head as Wesley began to thrust his fingers in and out of Spike’s body in earnest. Just as the rhythm got good, though, and Spike’s cock began to grow again, Wesley pulled out and then pushed back in immediately with a third finger. Spike sucked in a breath and willed his muscles to relax at the unexpected intrusion.

“Am I hurting you?” It was a clinical question, no warmth behind it and no promise of stopping at Spike’s response.

Spike didn’t know what Wesley wanted from him, so he settled on honesty. “Yes.”

“I thought so,” Wesley said, thrusting his fingers in harder. “It’s going to hurt more when I add a fourth finger.”

“Without lube? Yeah. Going to hurt like a bitch at first.”

“You don’t seem particularly upset about it.”

“No.”

“I suppose it appeals to you as a vampire.”

“It appeals to me ‘cause it’s you, pet.” Spike hoped it was the right thing to say, since both answers were probably true.

Whether it was or wasn’t right, it certainly made Wesley stop. His breath huffed out, and he pulled back completely from the bed. Spike choked back a groan as his body twitched at the sudden loss of Wesley’s fingers, and the cuffs clattered as he tried to move toward him. He gave them a sharp, frustrated tug. Fuck, he just wanted Wesley in his arms, but he knew if he broke the restraints he’d lose whatever chance he had to fix what was wrong.

He heard a drawer open and items fall to the floor. Spike was still dizzy with the twin rushes of pleasure and pain, but he could tell Wesley was at his dresser. His mind’s eye recalled the pile of weapons there. They’d never played with that kind of pain during sex before, but he knew he could take whatever Wesley wanted to do to him. He knew Wesley wouldn’t stake him; the rest would just be a mess on the sheets… and probably a mess in Wesley’s heart.

When Wesley returned, he gave a hard nip to the inside of Spike’s thigh, making him jump and break out of his melancholy reverie, then pressed his teeth with careful gentleness at the base of Spike’s cock. He stayed there for a long moment, the soft puff of his breath enflaming Spike’s senses. A warm, bare shoulder brushed Spike’s thigh; Wesley had removed at least some more of his clothing, and Spike pressed his leg against him as an anchor.

“Fuck,” Spike whispered hoarsely. His cock kept swelling as Wesley’s mouth stayed on him, the hardness of his teeth in such a sensitive place only adding to the pleasure of the wet, hot breath against his skin. Spike’s erection grew into Wesley’s teeth, making them dig in deeper, and Spike’s hands fluttered as if to ward off the knowledge that if Wesley just stayed there, breathing but otherwise not moving, Spike would probably come from this much stimulation alone.

There was a quiet popping noise, and Wesley pulled back. There were some other sounds Spike knew he should recognize, but his body was too busy straining upward, trying to regain Wesley’s touch, to be able to identify them. Then Wesley moved back between his legs, urged Spike’s thighs wider, and pushed into him with cool, blessedly slick fingers.

“Is that easier for you?” Wesley asked.

Spike nodded, caught up in the thrust-twist, thrust-twist of Wesley’s hand working deeper and deeper into him. He could still feel where Wesley’s mouth had been on his cock. “Yes.”

“Good. Because I’m not finished yet.”

“Neither am I, mate,” Spike said, moving his hips in Wesley’s slow rhythm.

Wesley laughed, just a little, but it turned some of the anxious tension knotted in Spike’s belly into much hotter and happier anticipation.

“You can take more,” Wesley said, and although it wasn’t a question Spike nodded in response. “Good.”

It wasn’t a surprise when Wesley’s hand withdrew and then swiftly reentered Spike with what had to be an additional finger – the third or fourth, Spike wasn’t sure and really didn’t care – but it still make Spike grip the bars of the headboard and lift his upper body an inch off of the mattress. It was either that or start begging Wesley to just bloody well fuck him already, and he didn’t think the plea would be welcome.

“As pretty as you are like that, stop showing off your impressive muscle definition and lie back down,” Wesley told him.

“Pet – “

“Lie _down_.”

Spike obeyed him, sinking back onto the bedding and forcing his hands to release their hold.

“Much better,” Wesley said. As a reward, perhaps, or just because he preferred the angle, he drew Spike’s leg over his shoulder to rest there.

Spike’s arousal surged through him at the extra contact with Wesley’s warm, slightly sweaty skin. He wanted _more_ , wanted to feel him and touch him and taste him, and he didn’t know how much longer he could lie back and think of England when what he wanted was –

His train of thought was thoroughly derailed by Wesley’s hand twisting its way another inch deeper into Spike’s body. The burn of his muscles was intense, though he certainly didn’t mind it. He just couldn’t remember what he had been complaining to himself about the moment before.

“Does that hurt?”

The question was less clinical than it had been before, but Spike still went for honesty. “Yeah.” He clenched a bit around Wesley’s fingers and was rewarded not just with a nice burst of pleasure for himself but a gasp from Wesley, as well. “Good, though.”

“Yes, I can see you like it.”

His tone was strange, and Spike couldn’t read it without seeing Wesley’s face. “That a problem?”

“No,” Wesley said. “You’re welcome to react as you like.”

Spike opened his eyes. He had to. Wesley’s face was still drawn, his eyes fixed on where his hand was moving relentlessly in Spike’s body. He looked focused but slightly lost, his breathing ragged and his chest flushed. Then Wesley’s gaze moved to Spike’s face; he didn’t react to seeing Spike looking at him, and Spike didn’t know if that was good or bad.

“You’re still tight,” Wesley said.

“Your hand’s not exactly dainty, love.”

“True.” Wesley twisted his long fingers as he pushed in and out, in and out, stretching Spike wider and wider and yet not filling him enough. Then suddenly he knelt back and pulled his hand away. “Well, then,” he said, reaching for the lube and squirting a bit more onto his hand.

Spike knew then what was coming, and his cock twitched in anticipation even as he watched Wesley’s expression warily. They’d never done this before, not the two of them together, and though he didn’t mind in the slightest he really couldn’t understand what the hell was going on with Wesley that now was the time it was going to happen.

“Close your eyes,” Wesley said softly, reseating Spike’s leg on his shoulder.

Spike obeyed, and then his body was being gently but surely forced open by all of Wesley’s fingers pressing into him. He knew he could take it, he knew it, but he still gasped at the size of the intrusion. Wesley’s fingers were long, and with five of them tucked together they were thick, and then thicker still Wesley’s hand behind them.

“Fuck,” he gasped, desperate to relax but too painfully aroused and on edge to do so.

“There’s more,” Wesley said, turning his hand a bit and pressing in deeper. Spike could feel the ridges of his knuckles, the breadth of his palm as they worked their way inside of him.

“Fuck,” Spike said again, because he couldn’t think of anything else but the sheer carnality of Wesley’s hand disappearing into him and opening him impossibly wide. He felt like a butterfly pinned to a card, caught helplessly between the twin shackles of the cuffs at his wrist and the hand inside of him. His chest hurt, his erection throbbed, and his body ached for more.

“You can take it.”

Spike nodded blindly. “Yeah.” And then the stretch changed and sweetened as Wesley’s hand breached him completely and Spike clenched around him all the way to the fine bones of his wrist. He made a wordless sound of desire and wished with all of his being to be able to see Wesley’s face, but he didn’t dare break the moment.

“How’s that?”

“Good,” Spike gasped.

“Good?”

“Bloody fucking wonderful.”

Wesley did something – clench or flex, Spike really couldn’t tell from his side of things – to make him gasp again. His heart was in his throat, but all of his focus was on the gentle but insistent movements of Wesley’s hand deep within him.

“Tell me,” Wesley said.

“What?”

“Tell me how it feels to you.”

“I don’t – You want me to _talk_?”

“I could stop,” Wesley said, illustrating his point by stilling his movements entirely.

“ _No_.” Spike flexed against his restraints.

“Then tell me.”

“I…” He had to swallow to try to get his voice to work. “Fuck, I don’t know. You’re in me. So deep. Feels like you could grab my heart in your palm if you shifted just an inch.”

“How arousing,” Wesley drawled.

Spike had to let the comment go, since there was no way to carry on an actual conversation when Wesley’s hand was throbbing inside of him, flexing and pressing in a relentless rhythm. In, out, twist, flex – whatever Wesley was doing, it drove Spike in some primal way. It made his body throb and his heart clench in his chest. It filled him, made him feel unstoppable and as fragile as a china figurine all at once. He was glad that he didn’t need to breathe, because he wasn’t sure he could make his lungs work properly.

He might have been surprised by the sudden gentleness of it all after what had led up to it, but he was too caught up in the sensations inside of him to be able to hold onto the thought for more than a second. “It should be too big, too much, but it isn’t. Not like that. Not when you’re moving like that. It’s… it’s like a heartbeat. Like it’s driving me. Like it’s everything.” He twisted his arms in the secure grip of the cuffs. “Yeah, that pounding in my ears, that rush in my veins. I remember it.”

“A heartbeat.” Wesley’s voice was soft and rough, and he turned his face against Spike’s knee, his hot breath ragged against Spike’s skin.

“Yeah. Yours. Mine. Yours in me.”

Wesley didn’t reply, though his hand didn’t stop moving. The metal cuffs clattered against the rails of the bed as Spike moved helplessly with him. He was drunk and dizzy with it all, and he found himself moaning as he let his worries about Wesley fade in the face of such heady arousal.

“Can you come from this?” Wesley finally asked. His lips brushed the side of Spike’s knee as he spoke.

“I don’t know,” Spike replied. He hardly recognized the sound of his own voice, thick with desire and desperation. “I want to. I want to.”

“Then you should.” Wesley leaned forward, and his breath moved along Spike’s inner thigh.

“I’ll get right on that.”

Wesley’s next exhalation sounded something like a laugh as it ghosted over his skin. “Please do.”

Spike wanted Wesley’s mouth on him, but in the next thought he realized he didn’t. It would be too much for him to handle. It would take away too much from the rest of what Wesley was making him feel.

“There. Stay there,” he begged, pulling at his cuffs.

Wesley didn’t reply, but he didn’t move, either. Instead he moved his hand just a bit harder, a little faster. It was more than he could take, just perfectly too much, and it broke that last little bit of control that was holding him back. It was all Spike needed, that intense rhythm deep inside of him, that shared heartbeat driving him over the edge, and with a shout he arched his back and poured his release out in spurts across his belly.

It was a bit like being knocked over the head; though in this case he had known his orgasm was close, he was still surprised by the force of it as it took control of his body and made the world explode around him. He was moving, moaning, every inch of him feeling, but he couldn’t make sense of any of it. He couldn’t, and it was bloody wonderful.

The slightly sickening feeling of Wesley’s hand withdrawing from his body made Spike aware enough of his surroundings to open his eyes. It was still the same room with its familiar furnishings and hints of late afternoon sun slanting through the gaps around the window shade. Yet Spike didn’t feel fully there. His body was warm and weak, empty and at peace, all at once. He didn’t know if it meant anything, but he couldn’t worry about it or anything else in the world.

Wiping his hands on a towel that Spike vaguely remembered being run over his own stomach, Wesley sat back on his heels, breathing hard. His erection strained at the front of his pants. “Spike – your mouth – can I?”

“You never have to ask,” Spike said with what little voice he could muster.

With shaking hands, Wesley removed the pillows from beneath Spike’s hips and straightened his legs to a more comfortable position; Spike was grateful for the care, since the intensity of his release had left him so blissfully weak that he wasn’t entirely sure he could have moved his limbs on pain of staking.

Leaving Spike’s limp arms still secured above him to the headboard, Wesley to crawled up Spike’s body and straddled his chest. Spike watched Wesley’s hands tremble as they went to his fly; he didn’t know if it was Wesley’s arousal or frustration or need or despair that was causing the motion, but he really couldn’t care because Wesley’s thick erection was finally free of his clothing and right there in front of Spike’s face.

Spike desperately wanted to lift his head up to lick away the salty moisture that was beading on the head of Wesley’s cock, but he knew this was about Wesley, not him, so he waited. He didn’t have to wait long. Wesley leaned forward to steady himself on the bedstead and tilted his hips so his erection brushed Spike’s lips.

“Fuck,” Wesley groaned, and that was as much permission as Spike needed to open wide and take Wesley in as deeply as he could.

Spike groaned, too, caught up in the pleasure of having Wesley in his mouth, tasting him, feeling him, being filled by him again. He’d missed everything about Wesley while he was away, but the simple pleasure of being this close to him, of giving him this pleasure, was what he’d missed the most. So he sucked and swallowed as eagerly as if he were fully aroused instead of at least temporarily sated and spent, and Wesley didn’t disappoint him by holding back.

He tried to match his rhythm to Wesley’s thrusts, encouraging him to push harder and deeper simply by following his lead. Wesley’s breath came in harsh gasps, and his cock swelled further in Spike’s mouth as he thrust in and out, not as deeply as Spike could have taken him but deep enough to make him feel a hint of what he’d had with Wesley’s fist inside of him – filled, connected, drunk with the sensation of Wesley’s movements driving through him to the tips of his fingers and toes.

Spike closed his eyes, robbing himself of the exhilarating view of Wesley’s bared body above him and of Wesley’s face tight with pleasure, but without those sights he could focus instead on the cock in his mouth, on every solid inch of it gliding along his tongue. This, too, was bloody wonderful. He swallowed, his mouth watering in his eagerness to have more.

“Oh, god,” Wesley said, stopping for a moment as his entire body shuddered. He started to thrust again, harder and faster, pausing each time at the point where he was the deepest in Spike’s mouth and holding there with what was obviously a great amount of willpower. The zipper of his jeans rasped against Spike’s cheeks, but Spike didn’t care, instead focusing on the throbbing of Wesley’s cock on his tongue.

“Oh, god,” Wesley said again, and he reached down to cup Spike’s cheek as he lost his rhythm, lost his control, and pushed wildly into Spike’s mouth as he poured out his release. Spike kept sucking and swallowing him down, holding the thick weight of Wesley in his mouth as long as he could while Wesley gasped and shook above him.

It was over too soon, Wesley pulling away and leaving Spike empty once more, though the comforting taste of him in his mouth lingered.

“I’ll be back,” Wesley said softly, so Spike kept his eyes closed and listened to Wesley pad out of the room, run some water in the bathroom, and return. He stayed quiet as Wesley used a warm, damp towel to clean him up and then gently released his wrists from the handcuffs.

There was the sound of clothing sliding over skin, and then a dip in the bed beside him. Spike looked over to see Wesley lying naked on his side near enough to touch but yet not doing so.

“All this and I haven’t had a kiss,” Spike said lightly, unsure of where to tread.

“I’m sorry,” Wesley said and leaned in to press their mouths together. The kiss was soft and apologetic, mirroring the words, and Spike wanted none of it, not after all they’d just done. He managed to get one of his arms to move, and he cupped the back of Wesley’s head to pull him in properly.

Wesley’s hesitation turned quickly to something more fiery, but just when Spike was considering whether he had the energy to roll them over and fuck Wesley into the mattress Wesley gentled his mouth once more and slowly ended the kiss.

Since he probably didn’t have it in him for another shag for at least a few more minutes, Spike simply tugged Wesley to him and let his head rest back against the pillow.

They were quiet for a bit, just holding each other as they basked in the afterglow of a pair of excellent orgasms. Spike knew the storm wasn’t completely past, but he knew most of it had to have gone for Wesley to be able to lie beside him so calmly.

Still, there was something Spike had to say, so he broke the silence to get it off his chest. “I love you.”

“Are you all right?” Wesley asked.

“How is that the right response to a declaration of love?”

“Spike, please.”

It clearly was too soon for humor. Spike relented and replied, “Right as rain.”

“I could have hurt you,” Wesley said quietly against his shoulder.

“Not you, love.”

Wesley nodded.

“Not you,” Spike said again. “Only thing you can do to hurt me is break my heart. The rest I can take just fine.”

With a shuddering breath, Wesley said, “Thank you.”

“Any time, pet. Any time at all.”

“Let’s hope not anytime soon.”

Spike turned his head to kiss Wesley’s hair and tightened his hold. His limbs felt a bit less like they were filled with jelly, but he still didn’t want to move too much.

“You seem better,” he said softly.

“Yes.” Wesley swallowed and said, “Yes. I am. Thank you.”

They lay there for a while, Spike with his eyes closed and his ears filled with the sound of Wesley’s calming breathing. He thought they might sleep, but Wesley didn’t, so Spike didn’t allow himself to drift off. Finally, a long time later, he asked as casually as he could, “How was your trip?”

He could feel Wesley shrug. “We killed the sorcerer and sent his minions back to their own dimension. As you might have guessed, given that I’m here instead of the continent being overrun by hellhounds. I was able to use his own magic against him.”

Spike let the snarky comment go, though he was pleased to hear a bit of his Wesley emerging from the bleak shell that had arrived home. “But?”

Wesley didn’t answer right away, but Spike waited. He knew he had to. “Angel disapproved of my methods,” Wesley said simply.

“Says the head of Wolfram & bloody Hart. His hat’s plenty grey.”

“Apparently he thinks mine is even darker and less dependable.”

Fighting hard with his instinct to argue against Angel’s point of view loudly and at length, Spike snapped out, “That’s a load of bollocks, and you know it.”

There was another long, telling pause, but Spike could feel Wesley relax inch by inch against him. “I’m not what I once was.”

“None of us is, pet,” Spike said, staring up at the ceiling. “But we’re still doing the right thing. He wants it to be easy, is all, and we know better.”

“Yes.”

“And you won.”

“Yes.”

“Then Angel’s got his head up his ass like he always does.”

“Innocent people were hurt,” Wesley told him. “I’m not sure how many; Angel got most of them out while I was fighting the sorcerer. But I wasn’t thinking of them, and innocents were hurt. Killed.”

“It happens,” Spike said, though he knew as well as Wesley that it made any victory less sweet. “Wasn’t there a book about that? _Why Bad Things Happen to Good People and Complete Wankers Get Law Firms_?”

Wesley’s breath huffed out in a soft laugh. “I seem to remember something like that on the New York Times Bestseller List.”

“There you are.”

“Still,” Wesley said slowly, “sometimes I think you’re the only thing keeping me from proving him right. Going too far.”

Spike kissed his hair and held him close. “You’re wrong there. You wouldn’t cross that line even on your own.”

“I could have today. With you.” It sounded like the words hurt to say.

“You didn’t come anywhere near it, pet.”

“How can you say that? I wasn’t thinking. You weren’t stopping me. I could have – “

“I could have stopped you,” Spike said.

“But you didn’t.”

“Didn’t need to.”

Drawing in a long, shaky breath, Wesley rubbed a hand over his face.

“I trust you,” Spike said. “And I’m a good judge of people. It’s one of my many amazing skills.”

“Indeed it is.” Wesley smiled faintly even as a furrow formed between his brows. “I’m – “

“If that’s an apology I don’t want it.”

Wesley sighed. “All right.”

“You needed to do it. Needed to push that far. Needed me to trust you.”

“Perhaps that’s why I want to apologize.”

“I still don’t want it.”

“All right,” Wesley said again, even more quietly.

“I love you.”

Wesley met his gaze and said with utter gravity, “I love you, too.” He clearly meant something more than just the basic words, though Spike was buggered if he knew what. It was probably that bleeding apology he seemed fixed on giving him.

“It’s _all right_. It’s not all sunshine and roses, Wes, not for us,” Spike told him as gently as he could. “Not for us.”

Wesley’s arm snaked around Spike’s waist in a sure grip, but he put his head back on Spike’s shoulder and didn’t reply.


End file.
